OhioHealth's physicians teamed up with mobile software company eProximiti to create a mobile app that aims to improve women's health. The partners have released the free-of-charge app, called Duet Health to provide soon-to-be mothers with information about their pregnancies using their iPhones or Android device. OhioHealth is a not-for-profit group of 18 hospitals, 23 health and surgery centers, home-health providers and other healthcare service providers that serve 40 counties in the state.
The organization's app provides educational text, images and video detailing anything from screening tests to info on the stages of fetal development and common pregnancy related problems. In addition to the informative aspects, the app also offers timely appointment reminders, links women to their doctor's office phones, and provides directions to hospitals where OhioHealth physicians deliver. Duet Health sports a customized personal home screen with the patient's due date which signals the program to give updates about gestation periods and needed screenings. Additionally, the home screen hosts a note taking feature where women can write reminders of issues they want to discuss with their doctors. While the main focus of the app is pregnancy, it will also offer information on other women's health issues.
Sixty patients at Grant Medical Center and Riverside Methodist Hospital have been testing the application since March:
“This is something that empowers patients to be more informed when they arrive for their office visits,” said OB/GYN Andrew Bokor, MD, Grant Medical Center, one of the first physicians to offer the application to his patients.
Other popular pregnancy-related apps for iPhone users include Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter My Pregnancy Today app, MedHelp's I'm Expecting app, and Whattoexpect.com's app Pregnancy Trackers, according to MobiHealthNews' own app report last September.
The app launch is right on the heels of another big mobile announcement targeted at mothers: Text4Baby recently affirmed that it plans to reach 1 million mothers by the end of next year. The service currently reaches more than 157,000 mothers. A couple of important distinctions between the two offerings: While Text4Baby is a less sophisticated offering of one-way information texts it works on almost every single mobile phone. The OhioHealth offering has more advanced features but for now only works on Android and iPhone smartphones, and that will likely limit the potential user base to a minority of the organization's patients.
